BlindFire (21 page)

  "I didn't want anything anyway."
He replied and went in almost tripping
over a young boy who was playing near the door. "Hello Jason."  He said.

  The boy ignored him. He hated this ugly man with the weird accent. Jason thought he kept staring at him, but when he turned around Jack was always watching TV.

  "Come on Jason time to go to bed."

  "Oh mum."  He cried.

  "Do as your mum says boy."

  Jason immediately went upstairs.

 
"You kn
ow I wish his real father could
have been a little harder on him."

  Jack smiled seein
g a private joke. "Oh yes a good beating never hurt anyone
."

  Jas
on changed in to his py
jamas and sat on his bed cradling the picture of his dad. "Please come home dad."  He pleaded.  "....Jack is strange... I don't like him."  Then he got into bed and turned the light off.

  Jack made love to the woman again; he had to keep her sweet. Slightly overweight and getting on in her years didn't hold her back at all. She couldn't
get enough
. She liked him aggressive and violent. He held on to her fat hips with a vice like grip and pummeled her buttocks. As he came
she screamed with pleasure while he replayed the fun he’d had earlier in the day
.

  He awoke with a jump and rubbed his eyes, it was light outside already.

  "What time is it?" 
Sandra asked as she put
her glasses on. "Shit... I'm late."  She jumped out of bed and dressed as quickly as she could. "Jason!"  She screamed. "Jason
get
up!”

  "You go to work."   Jack
said
.  "I'll take care of Jason."  He gritted his teeth as the tingling excitement spread throughout his body. He thought about the tightness and beautiful soft silky skin. He could hardly contain himself as the woman returned to the bedroom.  "Go on you get yourself off to work..."

  "Oh, where's my purse?"  She said then spotted it on the dresser. "....Back tonight."  She said running out the door.

  He waited a few minutes for her to drive off and then got out of bed taking the cord from his dressing gown with him. Clenching his fist, he approached the door to Jason’s room, all the time thinking of excuses for his disappearance. He grabbed the handle and as he slowly turned it, there was a knock on the door.

  He wanted to get rid of whoever it was as quickly as possible, so he ran

downstairs in his boxer shorts. As he reached the front door, he saw the shadows of two men on the outside.

  "Who is it?"  He shouted.

  "Some
old
friends come to visit you."
 

  Jack recognis
ed the voice; it was Pat Riley
, an
old apprentice but now an
enforcer for the
Real
IRA.

  "Since when have you been my friend?"
Jack asked
, a littl
e suspicious of this off the cuff
visit.

  "Are you going to let us in?"

  Jack pursed his lips trying to think. There was definitely something going on here, but what?  "Sure."  He said grudgingly and opened the door.

 
Both men immediately stepped out of the blazing sun into the dark confines of the hallway.

  "What brings you two here?"

  "Get dressed Jack... There's some business we need to take care of."

  Jack stepped back, suddenly realizing what was going on. H
e forced a smile.  "Of course, l
et me go and throw a pair of jeans on."

  "I am afraid the
re's no time for that."  Patrick
went for his gun, but Jack had been expecting it,  grabbing an ornamental tomahawk from the wall he swung as hard and fast as he could embedding the axe in his neck. He stood there for a second and then fell.

  The other man
took one look at Patrick’s body and
simp
ly put his hands up. "Please..!
I didn't want to come here anyway..."

  "Who sent you?"  Demande
d Jack, sheer insanity showing o
n his
disheveled
face and present in his shaky voice.                                                        

  "Charles McCaughey sent us.... He wants you dead."

  "Why?"

  The stranger shook his head and looked at the floor. "I.... I don't know."

  "You're lying."

  The man shook with fear.  "They think..."

  "They think what?"

  "....that you’re a murderer
.
.!
"

  Jack felt winded as the blood drained from his face. "...Why ...Why should they think that?" He stammered.

  The stranger shrugged with honest ignorance. "I don't know."

  "... I... I thought Char
les was my friend!
"

  The anger boiled over, spilling onto the surface like some physical substance as the axe cut through the air again and again, finally coming to rest in t
he mans already smashed face
.

 
He legs buckled underneath him and he sank
to his knees staring
cross eyed
at the colorful feathers attached to the handle of the tomahawk. Perhaps he was already dead before he hit the ground.

  They were heavy and the stairs in to the cellar were narrow, but eventually he hid both bodies under a tatty old carpet.
Then he returned
back up
the
stairs to clean the blood off the walls. From recent experience he knew that diluted vinegar did the trick, returning the wallpaper to its previous tasteless pattern.

  He heard a cough upstairs, and then remembered Jason. He thought of his earlier cravings, but they had subsided.

  "Are you up yet?"  He shouted.

  "Sure."  Came the reply. "Who was that downstairs?"

  He checked that the cellar door was closed, then: "Don't worry yourself, they've gone
now
."

  Jason had been dressed ages, laid on his bed watching his favorite cartoon, completely unaware of what had happen downstairs. He glanced over at his clock, time to go to school.

 
“Good morning.”
Jack
said and cracked a weak smile. He
was sat at the kitch
en table when Jason walked in.

  The boy
ignored him; there was just something
about this horrible Irishman he hated, there was something
he
just
couldn't put his fi
nger on.

  "What
are
you doing today...?" Jack
asked as he yawned and ran
his fingers through his
black
hair.

  "Soccer... Have you seen my boots
anywhere
?"

  Jack shook his head.

  Jason looked thoughtful for a while. "Maybe they are
down
in the cellar."

  "No... No they can’t be...
Why don’t you h
ave a
nother look upstairs?
"

  "No... I'm sure mum put them in the cellar." 
He grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl
. "...I'll take a look."

  Jack relaxed.  "That's right; you take a look in the cellar..."

  The
re was something in the
tone of his voice scared Jason, he started to back off.  "Maybe I should give sports a miss today..." 
He said and clutching his books he stumbled through the
back door
and out into a small yard
.

  The way to school was t
h
rough the gate at the bottom of the garden along the path and over t
he stream, where all the drunks and homeless tramps
hung out. Jason kept looking over his shoulder, he was unsure but he didn't know what he was unsure about. He was convinced it was something to do with those boots. Why didn't Jack want him to go in the cellar, was he hiding something in
t
here?

  This nagging thought preyed on his young mind until dinnertime, and then he just had to go and have a look. He was convinced that Jack wouldn't know about his secret entrance into the cellar, it was just an old air duct or something, nobody really knew why it was there.

  He got to the side of the house without being seen and then slipped behind the large gooseberry bush to the duct. It was a struggle to slide through, in a few more years he would be too big. Once his eyes had adjusted to the sudden loss of light, he could see quite clearly. There seemed nothing out of the ordinary just the same old junk that had been down there for years.

  Then he saw it, out of place on the steps. He wondered why his mum had put it there. Puzzled he walked over and picked the Tomahawk up. It was covered in something wet and slimy; horrified Jason dropped it realizing it could only be blood.

   After the boy had gone Jack didn't know what to do, he panicked. If the IRA wanted someone dead then it happened, no arguments. How had they found out, how could an
yone know of his evil lust? He k
new there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run and nothing he could do to change the outcome of the sentence passed down to him by the warlords. He couldn't believe his friend Charles had sent them.

  He wondered if the police were already looking for him, maybe they were watching him now.  He dashed to the windows searching the streets from each view point. There was only one car out the front and that was empty. He suddenly thought of snipers and dove down under the
window. His
hands shaking and his stomach turning, he tried to get a grip of himself by lighting a cigarette, but  breaking  it  in  half  before  he  could  get  it  in  his  mouth.

  He sat there huddled up for what must have been hours, afraid to move into someone's cross hairs. They wouldn't take him, Jack McKay would die first, and then he thought of the hail of bullets awaiting him and decided against martyrdom. There had to be a way out, there always was.

  Gathering all his courage, he stood and looked out the window. The street was sedate with kids playing about and a man cutting his lawn. He grinned; it must be a big
con
. He had heard how tricky these yank cops could be. He suddenly froze in his tracks, there was a loud crash coming from inside the cellar. Like a metal object being dropped.

  Grabbing a poker from the fire place, he dashed to the cellar door and flung it open. He was expecting some sort of swat team, but the scene that met his eyes sent him flying in to a blind rage. The bodies shouldn't have been found yet.

  Jason stared up at the crazed man for a second, and then started screaming.

Poker raised Jack tore down the stairs but still wasn't in time to stop the boy escaping through a hole in the wall, crashing the poker into the brickwork just behind his escaping feet. This set
Jason
off screaming again and he didn't stop all the way to his friend’s house.

  By the time a police squad car did arrive, Jack was long gone using a false passport to return to the beloved home of his ancestors.

***

  The Major glared at Gunter. The argument had been raging for hours and they were still in disagreement. "......Yes, so I am a British officer..... But this doesn't mean I can't do something to improve this situation... I saw the chance and I took it."

  "You can't just go around killing old men just because you think they are important to the struggle of the Irish."

  "Who the hell were they anyway?" Danny
a
sked.

  "They were the leaders.
.. The moneymen and the masters
."

Danny
glared at Gunter. "So what's your problem....? I think we were right to sort them out..."

  Suddenly the phone rang, breaking the stalemate. The Major immediately picked it up.

  "Rothschild... Yes Sir... Of course... I understand... I think
we can all assume Stone
went down with the
Regina
."

 
Gunter laughed and ruffled Danny’s
hair and the Major raised his hand demanding silence.

  "Yes Sir.... I see."  He went quiet then put the receiver down.

  "What is it?"  Demanded Beth.

  "The Americans think McKay's on his way back here."  He stood up and turned away. Not before Beth noticed the tears swimming in his eyes. "......They're still turning up bodie
s around his home... Mostly young women... Some
were
boys."